He found himself a position at the back of the home crowd who were all standing together in a bunch, the fellows with their arms across one another’s shoulders, calling out unheard last messages, throwing now and again a snarl of bright paper ribbons to strike the deck rail before her and unfold in fluttering tribute down the side of the ship, chanting some giddy doggerel of a song familiar to the crowd.
Thurlow stood behind them, grave, sad, his eyes on the girl’s bright face, and could not be sure that any of her signals or smiles were for him.
She held his gift in her hands, and once she held it up and wafted with her fingertips a kiss toward the land as if she might be saying another thanks for just him alone, but then he saw that the kiss went wide with her lovely gesture, and all the others were flinging back merry kisses. The air was full of them. He turned from it all half sickened, closed his eyes, and drew a deep breath. For an instant, he felt as if the earth was reeling under his feet. Then quickly he opened his eyes, looking steadily toward that ship again as a siren sent up its terrifying farewell. Fool that he was! He must not take this to heart so. He was here to see this thing through, and he was a man!
He managed a grave smile and a wave of the hand at the last as the ship moved out from shore. Then he stood with lifted hat and watched her lovely figure standing there, moving away from him, out, out! What a terrible thing a ship’s sailing was! The sea separating people who had been a part of one another’s lives for long, happy years!
He turned away while her face was still visible as she stood there smiling back to shore and waving joyfully. Somehow he could not bear to see it fade to nothing. He had a feeling that she did not see him, was not differentiating between himself and the others, so that it would not matter to her. He would go with that bright vision of her face stamped upon his memory. And if he never had anything else, he would still have that memory. Not just a wide sea with a vanishing ship in the distance.
He elbowed his way through the crowd, and nobody noticed his going unless it was the girl on the ship. There was great bitterness in his heart. He told himself he was sorry he had come. Yet he knew he would not have done otherwise.
Once he thought he heard his name shouted by one of the fellows, but he did not turn his head. He did not want to see that ship afar with a great ocean between.
He had an errand to do for his mother, but he hastened with it and caught an early train back home. He tried to read a paper on the way, but the letters blurred before his eyes, and finally he gave up all pretense and sat there sternly lecturing himself, trying to get a bearable attitude of mind before he got home and his mother read his face and suffered with him. His mother was like that. She always knew when he was suffering.
He told himself it was a good thing Barbara had gone before she knew anything about his troubles. At least he would not have that mortification to worry about. She had gone respecting him, maybe caring more for him than she was willing to let him see, and that was just as it should be. Time would turn her heart to other interests, and she would perhaps never have to know how his circumstances had put him into a place in life where he could never hope to have the assurance to try to win her. And he wanted her not to be hurt as he was being hurt. She would not have to know or understand the attitude he would feel obliged to take toward her, for his pride’s sake. Because he loved her, he hopedyes, he told himself he really hopedthat she never cared, would never have to feel what he was feeling now. Well, he ought to be glad that her kiss had been light and there was nothing for either of them to regret in it! He ought to be glad that he could remember her happy, carefree face! Perhaps some day he would come to the place where he could be glad about it, but now there was only an ache in his heart. An ache that seemed unbearable when he thought of it as something he might have to carry all his life.
It was late when he reached home. The train was late. There had been a freight accident ahead of the New York train, which delayed them, and he missed one train out to their suburb on the edge of the city, but he saw by the light downstairs that his mother had waited up for him. Mother always would. So as he neared the house, he adjusted a monotonous whistle on his lips and went in trying to simulate cheerful indifference.
But his mother saw through it. She came over and kissed him and looked deep into his eyes, and though he tried to smile naturally and evade her glance, he knew she was not deceived.
“Yes, they got off on time,” he answered readily, too readily. “It was quite a merry send-off. I’m glad I went,” he said, trying to sound quite easy and natural.
“Of course!” said his mother, but her eyes searched him and read further than his words. And then, like a wise mother, instead of pursuing the subject further, she gave him something else to think about.
“The lawyer was here again this evening,” she said with a sigh, as if it wasn’t of much interest. “He said over again all the things he said the last time and a few more. He wanted me to sign the papers right away. He said he had to go west on a business trip, and he’d like to get this settled before he leaves tomorrow night. He said he’d give us fifty dollars toward our moving if we’d settle at once.”
Her son looked at her startled.
“Fifty dollars!” he said with a puzzled look. “He must want it a lot to let go even that much! He must have a purchaser for it, or else he knows his game is crooked and he wants to get away with it quickly before he gets found out. You didn’t give him an answer, did you, Mother?”
“No, I told him I would have to talk it over with you. But he wants his answer before twelve o’clock tomorrow.”
“Well, I’ll look into it first thing in the morning, but, Mother, I think we’ll keep him guessing. If anybody wants to buy the house, we are going to do the selling, see? It’s worth more to us than to anybody else, and we have nine days yet to pay the demand.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said his mother with a sigh. “We might lose even the fifty dollars, you know.” But she turned away satisfied that she had given her son something else to think about besides the girl who sailed away from him.
Thurlow went to bed at once, but he did not go to sleep. Neither did he spend all the time thinking about beautiful Barbara Sherwood. Instead, he was racking his brain for ways and means to save as much from the wreckage of the family fortune as he possibly could, and about the middle of the night he arose, turned on his light, and searched through the newspaper he had tried to read on the train until he found a paragraph that he had scarcely noticed when he first read it but that had come back to him with strange significance as he lie thinking. He read it twice through.
“It has been definitely decided to build a new schoolhouse in the Seventeenth Ward. The present school is overcrowded, and the capacity of the new school will have to be doubled.”
His eyes had skimmed over the page as he read it and it had meant nothing to him, but now it suddenly took on new meaning. Their home was in the Seventeenth Ward, a sort of a suburb yet counted as in the city. Perhaps there was a way out of this maze of trouble after all!
CHAPTER II
Thurlow went early the next morning to the president of the board of education and presented his suggestion that the site of the Reed home would make a central location for the new school that was proposed.
But he found to his dismay that while his suggestions were received with a degree of interest, they were put on file to be laid before the board at its regular meeting, which did not occur until five days later, too near to disaster to be counted upon. And though Thurlow urged haste and a special meeting to consider his proposition,